Indiana Native Noah Reed Excited To Call First Hoosiers Game

SEATTLE, Wash. – He may not have realized it at the time, but a Little Tikes basketball hoop would go a long way toward shaping Noah Reed’s life.

In the early 2000s, the Reed family often gathered to watch Indiana Hoosiers and Pacers basketball games. Noah, about five years old at the time, spent most of the game mimicking idols on his Little Tikes goal.

“I wore my Jared Jeffries jersey all the time,” Reed said. “But with a white short sleeve t-shirt because I wanted to be A.J. Moye.”

Reed added a personal flare by announcing the games as he threw down slam dunks or sank jump shots.

“You know you can do that as a job when you grow up,” Reed, now 30 years old, recalls his mother telling him.

That’s when the inspiration for Reed’s career began.

He started to seriously pursue a broadcasting career at Huntington North High School outside Fort Wayne, Ind., and at Ball State University after one season of Division III basketball at Defiance College in Ohio. After one summer as a broadcast and media relations assistant for the Peoria Chiefs, Reed landed his first full-time job with the BEK Sports Network in Bismarck, N.D. He called over 100 college and high school games a year, a job he says molded him.

On Saturday, his career links back to his childhood. Reed will call his first Indiana basketball game as the play-by-play broadcaster on Peacock as the Hoosiers take on Washington at 6 p.m. ET at Alaska Airlines Arena in Seattle. He will join analyst Eldridge Recasner, an All-Pac-12 player for the Huskies in the late 1980s.

Not too long ago, Reed wasn’t sure if he’d get this kind of opportunity. After five years in North Dakota, he moved back to Indianapolis in 2022. He put in his two-week notice at BEK without another job lined up, though he had connections in his home state.

The plan was to freelance for schools around the area and see what would come of it. Reed gave himself a two year timeline to continue pursuing his broadcasting career, and thought maybe it would be time to figure out something else. As it turned out, he wouldn’t need nearly that much time.

“Two days after I gave my two-week notice to my company in Bismarck is when the people at ESPN called me to do my first game,” Reed said in an interview with Hoosiers On SI. “I was very fortunate, very lucky. I felt like I put in a lot of time and effort and paid my dues in a very small market in Bismarck, North Dakota.”

Reed’s first call for ESPN was a high school football game between St. Xavier High School from Cincinnati and Loyola Academy from Wilmette, Ill. He remembers being thrilled but “beyond nervous,” especially since it was just a one-game deal with ESPN. But ESPN must have liked what they heard, because opportunities snowballed from there, and he called about 10 college football games that fall.

Reed has spent the last three years calling college basketball, football, volleyball and softball games on ESPN. He joined the NBC/Peacock and FOX team this season and has mainly called Big East basketball games of late.

So it came as a surprise when about two weeks ago he was presented with the chance to call Saturday’s Indiana game, which would typically be assigned to someone living on the West Coast.

“When I got that email, I was excited because it was my first Big Ten conference game and the team I grew up rooting for as a kid,” Reed said. “Just all of it, there was an element of shock and surprise, but then immediately a lot of excitement too. … I was obviously like, of course, and I was thrilled.”

Reed noted that things looked pretty bleak for Indiana a few weeks ago, but recent wins over Michigan State, Purdue and Penn State have raised the Hoosiers’ NCAA Tournament chances. Though they haven’t met lofty preseason expectations and still need to finish the season strong to reach the big dance, Indiana has shown how quickly things can change.

Reed thinks it’s also a lesson that teams can use NIL money to add plenty of talent from the transfer portal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to immediately translate to wins. It can be difficult for a team with so many new players to gel right away, and when expectations aren’t met, things can spiral.

After a recent win, Reed was impressed by Trey Galloway’s comment that the Hoosiers have bought into each other and the idea that everyone has to make sacrifices to be successful.

“I think they got to a point where these seniors that are gonna be done in a few weeks kind of just said, ‘Alright, we don’t have another shot at this. This is our last go around,’” Reed said. “And they’re gonna do whatever it takes to get to the tournament. I think that’s pretty cool and shows a lot of maturity and shows that just because things didn’t go well the first couple of months, it doesn’t mean they can’t change now.”

Washington is in last place in the Big Ten at 13-15 overall and 4-13 in conference play in its first season under coach Danny Sprinkle, who coached in the last three NCAA Tournaments at Utah State and Montana State. Though the program may not be where it wants to be right now, the Huskies are still pushing for a Big Ten Tournament bid.

For Reed, the most intriguing aspect of Saturday’s game is in the paint.

“I think [Indiana’s Oumar] Ballo and [Washington’s Great] Osobor, those two guys are studs and they’re really good down low,” Reed said. “We talk so much about guards nowadays and point guards and shooters, and I just think when you have two extremely talented big men, that’s fun and may be a little bit different than what we talk about usually in current college basketball. That’s a matchup I’m really excited to see.”

Saturday’s game is a full-circle moment of sorts for Reed, who grew up watching and attending Indiana basketball games. Reed said he dropped his Hoosier fandom and went all-in on being a Ball State fan when he began college.

But due to his upbringing and family connection to Indiana basketball, he acknowledges how special it will be to call his first Hoosiers game.

“The first thing that came to mind was my grandpa,” Reed said. “Because he always used to say when I was in elementary school, middle school and into high school, like, ‘I can’t wait to watch you do IU basketball games one day.’ And it’s bittersweet and I got a little emotional about it too, because he passed away in July, so he’s not here to see that. But there’s a part of me that’s like, ‘No, he’s gonna be there with me, and I’m gonna feel him in that moment and getting to do that game.’”